AI agents that run on infrastructure a model provider hosts and maintains, so teams can deploy an agent without building or operating the servers behind it.
Also known as Hosted agents, server-hosted agents
Managed agents are AI agents that run on infrastructure a model provider operates directly, rather than on servers a company builds and maintains itself. In 2026, major model providers began offering managed agent platforms: you describe the task, permissions, and tools an agent needs, and the provider handles execution, scaling, and uptime.
This is different from simply calling an API. A managed agent can hold a task for hours, use multiple tools in sequence, and pick back up after interruptions, all without a company’s engineering team writing the orchestration layer that makes that possible.
Agencies have wanted AI agents for repetitive account work for a while. Managed agents removes the main obstacle, which was needing engineers to build and babysit the infrastructure.
It lowers the technical bar to deploy an agent. an agency without a dedicated engineering team can stand up an agent that monitors campaign performance or pulls weekly reporting, because the provider runs the underlying servers
It shifts the vendor evaluation question. when a partner pitches an AI agent product, agencies should ask whether it runs on managed infrastructure from a known provider or on custom infrastructure the vendor built and maintains alone, since that affects reliability and support
It changes internal staffing conversations. agencies that once needed to hire a developer to build agent tooling can now evaluate managed agent options as a build-versus-buy decision, similar to how they’d evaluate any SaaS tool
An agency running paid social for a dozen mid-size clients builds a managed agent that checks each account every morning for budget pacing issues, flags creative fatigue, and drafts a Slack summary for the account lead before the 9am stand-up. The agency’s one technical hire configures the agent’s permissions and connects it to the ad platforms’ reporting APIs in an afternoon, without provisioning a single server. When the agent needs to run a multi-step check across a client’s Google and Meta accounts back to back, it keeps working through the sequence unattended, something the team previously handled with a shared spreadsheet and a Monday-morning scramble.
The automations and agents module of the workshop teaches you how to build AI workflows that compress the busywork without taking the craft out of the studio.